Age - TOJET the Turkish online journal of educational technology

The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – TOJET January 2005 ISSN: 1303-6521 volume 4 Issue 1
3. Is there a significant difference between EFL students’ attitudes toward communicating on computers after
using message boards in their teacher training courses?
4. What are EFL students’ reflections toward using asynchronous CMC tools?
METHODOLOGY
Participants:
The participants in this study were 52 prospective English teachers enrolled in two different courses (Computer
Assisted Language Learning, Methods in Language Teaching). Eleven participants were male and 41 of them
were female. None of the students had any previous experience using an asynchronous forum messaging system
or other electronic conferencing system before. In addition to their departmental courses, all participants had
received a formal instruction on a basic computer course (This course included basic concepts in using
computers (such as keyboarding and using mouse) and word and math processing office programs. This course
was a mandatory for all education students at the college of education). However, none had an earlier experience
with using any kind of asynchronous communication tool.
Teacher Trainees’ Attitudes toward Communicating on Computers Questionnaire
The Teacher Trainees’ attitudes toward communicating on computers questionnaire (ATC) was administered to
each participant during the first and last weeks of the semester. The purpose of administering the ATC was to
address the participants’ attitudes and perceptions of communicating on computers in education prior to their
classes and after completion of their semester. The ATC included 10 items in a Likert type with six categories:
Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Barely Disagree, Barely Agree, Agree, and Strongly Agree coded from one to six
respectively (See, Appendix A).
The ATC was first adopted by Bagci-Kilic (1999) as a subscale in an attitude questionnaire. The reliability of the
scale was reported to be .82 for the subscale. Another reliability analysis was calculated for this study, and it was
found .69 after excluding one item in the subscale. Content validity for the ATC is believed to be quite high due
to the way the instrument was constructed.
Web-Based Forum Design
Before the classes started, a web based forum system called CALL Forum was developed and placed in the
context of course web pages. Students were asked to register with their own username and passwords before they
were allowed to participate in forum discussions. The CALL Forum served as an online agora for students and
the course instructor. Students’ postings during discussions through the CALL Forum constituted the majority of
the qualitative data (Figure 1).
Figure 1: A screenshot from the CALL Forum webpage
1. Group selection; 2. Title of the Message; 3. Sending messages; 4. Sender’s information
Reflection Papers
In addition to the questionnaire and web-based discussion forum, students were asked to occasionally write
reflection papers. It was explained to students that because this type of communication is new to them, they
should reflect upon their experiences. These reflection papers were also collected at the end of the semester to be
analyzed.
Data Analysis
The data was analyzed using SPSS 11.05, and basic descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviations) were
computed for the data (Research Question 1). The mean differences among students’ access to computers with
respect to their attitudes (Research Question 2) and among their attitudes toward communicating through
computers before and after using the message boards in their courses (Research Question 3) were analyzed using
Mann-Whitney U statistics.
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